So layteknight’s trying her hand at DK tanking (she’ll post more on that later I’m sure). She’s freshly 80, and freshly geared for heroics (meaning mostly iLevel 187 blues and a few solid greens).

This post isn’t about that. It’s about how, as we were running some random heroics for gear and fun, I called someone a douchebag to their face for the first time ever today:

I was so mad. So unspeakably mad. It doesn’t matter that it’s technically true:

How the Hell did the LFG system pair up a 5.9K gearscore paladin with a group ranging from 2-4K?

Given her gear level, she probably won’t be able to tank for him, though I maintain that if he’s even a fraction as good as he seems to think he is, he could play it easy and not have TOO much trouble.

Nobody has the right to talk to another human being like they’re nothing. The condescension is uncalled for, rude, and unwelcome – on anyone. Layteknight kept saying: “It’s fine, it’s true, my gear’s shitty and he’s going to pull off me, whatever.” But it’s not about that – not for me, anyway. I’m a principles person – it’s the principle of the matter that matters to me, and the principle of the matter is he was being a rude piece of shit, and no amount of factual accuracy can justify that.

Maybe I’m oversensitive – Christ, I’d believe it. Maybe I’ve just been on the recieving end of this kind of attitude for too long. Maybe he didn’t mean it as shitty as it came out. But it sent me through the roof.

There are a million different ways he could have made those points. For instance, he could have said: “Shit. Sorry in advance if I pull off you – I’m overgeared for heroics, so it might be a bit rough.” Or even: “My gear’s really high level for this place and I’m probably going to do too much threat – did you want me to just tank it instead? :)”

But no. He has to ask a completely unnecessary rhetorical question, simply oozing with arrogance and disdain. And when layteknight confirmed it in a good natured fashion – while, I might add, telling me to calm down and not freak out and it didn’t matter – further suggest that he was just going to have to “ret tank” it because she’s obviously so shitty in comparison.

Do people not understand tone? Do they not understand how they sound when they speak? It’s so easy to put someone down or crush someone new to some aspect of the game. Layteknight’s not in danger of being crushed, but what if it was someone else? Someone newer to the game, with ZERO tanking experience, coming up against this attitude all the time? Bashing their heads off it constantly? I see it all the time and it’s to the point where I can’t stand the thought of letting it go, even though I recognize that may be wiser or easier or healthier for me in the long run.

It wasn’t necessary to summarily dismiss a person – a real person on the other end of the intertube – you’ve never met based entirely on your own opinion of how good you are.

Fucking. Douchebag.

I regret nothing.

So I continue to spaz out. We hit one of those pulls, on the left side of the instance, on the top level, where it’s a group of four and they split into two groups. Instead of waiting back with the tank like an intelligent DPS (gearscore or no), the pally rips up one side and decides to go without the lot of us because he’s just that uber. None of us are surprised. He’s been playing like a retard since he got in here.

We let him go. Layte runs over and gets the other half, the rest of the party follows her.

Mr. Douchebag6KGearscore decides that 50% health is just too low for him to tolerate, so he fucking bubbles and SaveTheFails picks up the aggro. Layteknight pulls the adds off him before he dies.

I start ranting out loud, and in whispers to Save, something along the lines of “Nice “ret-tanking” you fucking asshole” and how I wish, oh I wish, I could say it in Party Chat, when all of a sudden I see this:

I am livid right now. We had what was, to all extents and purposes, an excellent raid last night (well…a couple nights ago by the time this post is live). We got a fuck tonne of achievements. I got my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title finally (I’d “had” it, just scattered across three characters, so even though I’ve done all the content, I never had the title). We had a grand total of four wipes, each of them instantly corrected. Things dropped quickly, cleanly, and efficiently. Then it all went to fucking Hell in the last 30 minutes. Fucking. Hell. And not because of performance – because of personality. Because of drama. Because of afudkalfjweiahfjvzxnm,huewfajkxcz!.

But I’m not going to talk about it. And I’m not going to think about it. I’m going to go to my Happy Place.

My Happy Place is a spot, hopefully not too far in the future, when the entire world of Azeroth is torn to shreds by a great, burning dragon – and along with it, the hordes of drooling, over-geared, under-skilled, ignorant, arrogant, elitist pricks who think they’re better at this game than the rest of us because they’ve been handed their Tier on the backs of other people’s work and wouldn’t know a CC from a decurse if it bit them in the ass.

In this Happy Place of mine, Kill Orders are not just pretty icons designed to make the game more visually entertaining as the mobs dance in your AoFuckingE. They’re actual Orders, like a military commander might give you. They’re placed strategically to ensure priority targets are taken down quickly and efficiently, with minimum casualties. And if you don’t follow it you die and you wipe the group. Do that often enough and you won’t have a group.

In my Happy Place, AoE is a strategic decision, made after careful consideration of a given encounter. It is not a part of anyone’s rotation. Indiscriminate use will carry heavy consequences. Tanks will no longer be blamed for a poor AoE decision – rather, the AoEer will be expected to bear the weight of his own mistakes. I will never see the following, in relation to AoE, again: “wtf y i die/”. Instead, it will be: “wtf y u aoe rtard/”

In my Happy Place, there are consequences for idiocy, because tanks and healers can no longer indulge in, or compensate for it. DPS will be just as important as the other two roles because their job will encompass more than damage. They will not be selected based solely on two numbers – gearscore and Recount – they will be selected based on their ability to maximize their DPS to the extent possible while also CCing, decursing, and kiting. Their role will require skill, which no gearscore can passively compensate for.

In my Happy Place, all the cockweasels (to use my new favourite word, courtesy of Tamarind) who have been facerolling this content without any skill or attempt at improving themselves as players and members of the community will quit the game, because raiding and maybe even instancing will actually require you to wipe once or twice in order to learn the mechanics, and they just can’t deal with that. These people will wander, guildless, through a desolate wasteland of failpugs, trying to find a group willing to carry their unskilled, impatient, ungrateful ass through content that will forever make them its bitch.

In my Happy Place, regular raiding will require a fairly stable group – either through a guild, or perhaps a friendlist. This means it will require positive attitudes, a sense of community, and good behavior. You will have to be skilled at what you do, able to carry your own weight, and a nice enough person that people like you. Because you can’t just faceroll this shit anymore. You can’t just PuG it out to the drooling masses. You have to pick and choose who you take with you. And as I’ve already said, raiding in my Happy Place requires wiping, and nobody wants to make the run back from the graveyard with an asshole howling the whole way.

My Happy Place will also have weather. Because I agree with everything in this post.

In my Happy Place, the game has finally found that elusive balance between the hardcore and the casuals. Between accessibility and facerolling. Between PvP and PvE. Between major plots and an individual’s story. Between soul-sucking frustration, and free-soaring triumph.

I’m there right now, in my head. I can already see it. Every douchebag who’s ever made the in-game lives of me and my friends Hell is dying in the fires of the Cataclysm as we speak, writhing and screaming and too stupid to even know they’re standing in bad. The rest of us are gathered together on a hill somewhere in the Barrens, basking in the warmth, reveling in our sudden freedom from asshats. The General chat is curiously free of Chuck Norris jokes; someone requests the location of Mankrik’s wife. Someone else answers. A bird chirps, a zevhra is born, and the Circle of WoW moves on, unfettered from the chains of sloth and idiocy that repressed it for so long.

“Hey,” says someone in the group on the hill, “let’s go run heroic Deadmines.”

“Yes,” I respond, nodding slowly. Smoke rises from the ashes at the centre of the crater below us, and in that slender, ephemeral trail I find peace between myself and this game at last. “Let’s.”